What in the world has happened to the refined sport of Sonja Henie,
Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Katarina Witt?

Times change. And the battles that once took place only on the ice
have moved to Madison Avenue as well.

"One of the best-kept secrets in sports is how much money figure
skaters make," figure skating agent Michael Rosenberg said yesterday.
"Since the mid-1970s, since the time of Dorothy Hamill, top skaters have
made over $1 million a year."

The world of sequins has turned to gold. It has been estimated that
the Olympic gold medal in women's figure skating can bring as much as
$10 million in endorsements and earnings to its winner. Sports agent
Jerry Solomon of Arlington-based ProServ said that his client, injured
skater Nancy Kerrigan, could earn even more than that, ostensibly
because of the public attention and sympathy she has attracted since the
Jan. 6 attack that severely bruised her right knee.

One reason the sport is so lucrative is because it is so popular.
Television ratings tell the story: In February 1988, the Olympic skating
duel between Witt and Debi Thomas attracted the highest Saturday night
half-hour share on television since "Roots" 11 years earlier. Last
month, a rerun of the skating exhibition from the 1993 world
championships easily outdrew a live men's college basketball game
between Indiana and Kentucky.

Yet it is hard to draw parallels between skating and other sports
when it comes to financial reward. Only in the world's biggest boxing
matches is more money on the line for one athlete for one night's work.
And boxing is the only other sport that has such a dramatic payoff. In
boxing, it can end with one punch. In figure skating, it can end with
one fall.

"You can't imagine the pressure," said 1988 Olympic gold medalist
Brian Boitano, who, at 30, became a nervous wreck earlier this month
just trying to make the 1994 Olympic team. (He succeeded.)

No one yet knows whether money was the motive behind the attack on
Kerrigan, which was allegedly planned by Olympic skater Tonya Harding's
bodyguard, Shawn Eric Eckardt, and two other men, all of whom have been
arrested. It is true that Kerrigan had finished ahead of Harding the
past five times they had met on the ice. Neither skated particularly
well in 1993, but Kerrigan was slightly favored over Harding to make the
1994 Olympic team.

At the 1992 Olympics, Kerrigan won the bronze medal and Harding
finished fourth. There was a vast difference between the two places.
Kerrigan signed on to endorse Campbell's Soup, Evian, Xerox, Seiko and
Reebok, among others.

Harding went home to a stack of bills. The U.S. Figure Skating
Association said she received nearly $40,000 in grants and earnings from
November 1992 to October 1993. Her endorsements were nil; her
Portland-based fan club continually requests donations to help her.

Money quickly evaporates in skating. The Detroit Free Press reported
that Kerrigan pays between $3,000 and $5,000 for a dress. Experts say
that expenses for a world-class skater  ranging from ice time and
coaching to costumes and travel  can approach $50,000 annually.

So it should come as no surprise that in figure skating, like almost
every other sport in the Olympic or professional world, athletes can
become preoccupied with money.

"I see those little dollar signs in my head," Harding said to
reporters a while ago. "Nancy has already seen some of that."

She will see more.

"If Nancy wins the gold medal, after what has happened, she will be
Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Kristi Yamaguchi all rolled into one,"
said Rosenberg, who used to represent Harding.

The financial prospects for Kerrigan and Harding likely would have
been different even before the attack on Kerrigan. Although both come
from blue-collar backgrounds, the demure, polite Kerrigan has been the
darling of the U.S. skating community. Harding, who has a penchant for
pool halls and bowling alleys, has never been a favorite of that
blue-blooded crowd.

Said one U.S. skating official, who asked to remain anonymous:
"Nancy's not from a high-class background, but she's a lovely lady. She
was raised as a lady. We all notice that."

In most sports, being ladylike  or gentlemanly  does not matter
on the playing field. This is not the case in figure skating.

It always has been such a proper sport. It has maneuvers named for
people we don't know. Axels. Salchows. It has judges whose opinions,
while nearly impossible to understand, are reflected in the scores they
give. It rates athletes on the basis of what they're wearing, what
country they're from and if they know which fork to use first. Skating
ability has something to do with it too.

The sport is so high-brow that two-time Olympic gold medalist and ABC
sportscaster Dick Button doesn't even call himself a commentator. He
says he is "a narrator."

It's not all sequins, lace and plunging necklines.

There was speculation at the 1993 U.S. championships that the nine
judges purposely lowered scores for then-15-year-old Nicole Bobek
because she didn't conform to their lifestyle standards. One of her
transgressions? Wearing four earrings in one ear.

"They're sending her a message to tone it down," said a skating
insider.

As for Harding, if she, like Bobek, is an outsider, she has reveled
in it.

"I don't like to be like anyone else," Harding said at the trials.
"I'm my own person. I'll act the way I act."

If rugged individualism isn't a trait of most top skaters,
possessing nerves of steel has to be. Their competitions are a contest
against their own inner tensions. Whoever doesn't crack, wins. In a
split-second, it can be over.

Mark Mitchell, 25, a former U.S. world championship team member,
left his longtime coach and his family and moved to Milan in September
to train with legendary coach Carlo Fassi. All he did for four months
was prepare for the U.S. Olympic trials, where he needed to be one of
the top two men to make the trip to Lillehammer, Norway. Such was his
devotion that he rarely went out for dinner  even in Italy.

At the trials in Detroit, Mitchell skated onto the ice for the start
of his technical program. The music started. He began to loop around,
building speed for the most difficult required jump of the competition
and the only one with 3½ revolutions, the triple Axel. He took off
from the ice. He spun around. He came down  on his hands and knees.

The crowd groaned. Mitchell got up and kept skating. But the fall
had been devastating. In 30 seconds, he had gone from being a promising
Olympic candidate to an also-ran. He was full of hope when he leaped
into the air. He was ruined when he landed. He finished fifth.

Most athletic careers don't rely on one jump, or one anything. Were
Dallas Cowboy Leon Lett a figure skater, he never would have had a
chance to touch the football after the blocked Miami field goal in that
Thanksgiving Day game. He already would have been drummed out of the
sport after his first boneheaded move, allowing Buffalo's Don Beebe to
strip the ball from him on a touchdown in last year's Super Bowl.

An occasional professional golfer has ruined his or her career in
one fell swoop  although they might not realize the significance for
years. It happens in gymnastics now and then, although gymnasts have
other events in which they can redeem themselves. Boxing has the drama,
but it takes two people to produce it.

It's solo in men's and women's figure skating.

Consider the Battle of the Brians at the Calgary Olympics in 1988.
Boitano skated first and had the slightest hitch in a triple jump
landing. Then came Canada's Brian Orser. Ninety seconds into his
program, Orser two-footed a landing on a triple flip. Later on, getting
tired, he turned a triple Axel into a double.

Because of Orser's small mistakes, Boitano won the gold and went on
to a career in exhibitions and shows that is believed to pay him as much
as $1 million a year. Orser is doing the same thing, but his paycheck
isn't quite so big.

Figure skating competitions used to be decided in three parts:
compulsory (school) figures, the technical (short) program and the free
skate (long program). In the summer of 1990, the school figures, which
were variations of figure 8s traced on one skate in darkened arenas with
judges keenly watching, were eliminated.

A jumping contest ensued.

ABC's Button marvels at what he sees today.

"I broke ground doing one lousy triple jump in the 1952 Olympics," he
said recently. "Today, every child can do one."

This is what made Harding famous. In 1991, she became the first U.S.
woman to hit the most difficult of triple jumps  the triple Axel  in
competition. She won her first national title because of the difficult
jump, which requires the skater to take off from a forward position,
complete 3½ revolutions and land skating backward. Skating had opened
its arms to athleticism, and there was no more athletic female skater in
the United States than Harding.

And then there was Kerrigan, more graceful, more polished, with the
power to jump. The triple Axel wasn't in her repertoire, but all the
other triple jumps were.

Figure skating had made room for both of them. Or so it seemed.

Instead, this week, their careers have turned into a soap opera.

"This is about as good as it gets," said veteran U.S. ice dancer
Renee Roca. "There have been some lulus over the years, but this really
tops them all."